It's all been a bit quiet on the American movie remake of Death Note front, so I thought I thought I'd do some digging and see what I can uncover.

For Death Note fans, it feels like a lifetime has passed since we first heard that Shane Black was set to direct a movie for us. It comes as quite a shock to realize that announcement came only three years ago. Since then, it's all been about waiting for Shane to be free.

If you recall, back in 2011, Shane Black had three projects in the pipeline. He opted to direct Iron Man 3 first. That's long since been in on the silver screen, so the fandom held its breath to see what would come next.

Drat! It was Doc Savage. The movie is currently in production. As of September 2013, Shane was just piecing together his cast and talking to the media about in what direction he plans to take it.

We'd all be forgiven for thinking that the Death Note movie is imminent. If Doc Savage was cast in September, and it's now June 2014, then surely it's close to post-production and out of the way. But no. Since last autumn, Doc Savage seems to have gone off the boil somewhat.

The IMDb entry for Doc Savage appears to be stuck on 'script'. No closing credits, no cast listed, not even a date for release even tentatively on the horizon.  So if it's all gone away, does that mean its OUR big moment?

Noooo!  It doesn't! Because now Shane Black is apparently all gung-ho about a fourth movie, which just came from left-field! As of four days ago, Shane was sniffing around Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe, trying to get them to sign up for his film The Nice Guys!

This is a movie so hot off the press, that it hasn't even GOT an IMDb entry yet. *sigh* The one thing that we can be absolutely sure about, it's not Death Note!

However, our movie does still seem to be a Thing That Will One Day Happen. It still has an entry in the IMDb, which was last updated only two months ago on 23rd April 2014. And that was to update the status to 'script', i.e. exactly the same as Doc Savage!

It sounds like Shane Black has finally got one that he likes for the Death Note movie adaptation. This reality has been fraught with problems, since Warner Bros were originally adamant that Kira should be the Good Guy. Fortunately Shane fought our corner, thus proving to the fandom that our story is in safe hands.

Beyond this, all Death Note fans have to go on is what Shane told Bleeding Cool last year:

                     Right now I’ve got this thing at Warner
                     Bros. called Death Note that I like a lot. It’s a
                     Japanese Manga that’s very tense and really cool.
                                            ~ Shane Black, April 24th 2013

That, coupled with the IMDb update, leads me to believe that the Death Note film is still very much still on. Though at this rate we'll all be hobbling to see it on our zimmer frames, trying to convince our great-grandchildren that it's a great story that they really should come with us to watch.

If there are still cinemas by that point.

I've been a busy girl! It's only taken me about two years to get there, but I've finally made some much needed repairs to the He Moves Me Differently website.

For those coming here solely for the Death Note news, this pertains to fan-fiction. You're all best to skip this blog entry entirely, and label both that site and the link opposite with a firm 'Here There Be Dragons'.

For the rest of you, let's start there. As promised to Gina most recently, and many, many others over the years, I'm slowly converting my novels into eBooks.

As they were all originally written in text files, this is a bit of a convoluted process. I first have to take each of the chapters and combine them into one big one, via a command prompt. Then use Sigil to hunt down each chapter and reinstate them. Bung in a few titles, then open Calibre to convert them into other formats.

That took Hell of a lot quicker to say than it does to enact!

My cunning plan is to present you ALL with original files, which may then be taken into Calibre, so you may convert them to the format of your choice. That will take you whole seconds. That's how much I love you.  Current state of play is thus:

• My Own Way - Done and sitting in MediaFire awaiting your download.
• It Matters - As above.
• All the Way Here - Newly as above, as of last night.
• Poisoned Rationality - Command combined and uploaded into Sigil, but nothing else done yet.
• Watari I - Command combined.
• Watari II - Command combined.
• The Mello Code - Command combined.
• Annals I - Nothing done yet.
• Annals II - Nothing done yet.
• Walls Come Tumbling Down - Nothing done yet.
  

I will alert you when the situation changes, but I'm doing this between a lot of others things. In short, continents might shift in the time it'll take me to finish. But have the combined file for any of these, if anyone else wants a go. *hope above expectation*

I'm not seriously anticipating anyone rushing to do that. But perhaps some of the Matt-types out there may take pity. In which case, I've provided the combined files and instructions.

Much, much easier is converting the already processed ePub books into other formats. That same link also has instructions for that. You too could feel like Matt with about three seconds worth of clicking a button. I've set up a FileDrop for anyone wish to donate another format to the cause.

Anyone wishing to troll it with malware should first note this: I'm a TechnoPagan dedicated to the Morrighan as Gwyar. I am Three-in-One and I am legion. I don't forgive and I don't forget. Attempt to hide your ass beneath the TOR and I'll Gwyn ap Nydd it into submission; I know ALL the ways to Hex. Especially when you're attempting to pick on mine.  Bright blessings. :D

Onto the website itself. I've finally fixed that broken Amnesty International logo in the corner. It's an overflow one, but I got Bubbles to check it on a couple of systems. She says it works fine and doesn't interfere with anything else.

I've also fixed the Twitter widget, so those wanting to follow the musings of the EHC in action may do so once again.

Only four months in, I've finally got round to linking up Matti's Death Note News (the site you're on), so this is now officially the blog of the It Matters series too. I'll still favour the forum for 'as it happens' type announcements though. Only really blogging about it when I've got something fairly major to put out, or a round up like this.

In short - forum for 'need to know NOW' people; and blog for 'meh, I can wait'.

Most of the other changes were time-consuming and fiddly, but ultimately not that visible. They were all in the background, streamlining the code in useful but not exactly up for display ways. I won't bore you with those.

It was really the night of My Own Way, and a brand new addition. Which leads us nicely to this:

Over the years, people have often laughingly said, 'zOMG! I wish I had THAT on a badge.'  I've giggled with them, but never really crossed over into the notion that you could. I've opened a Zazzle store for the It Matters series and semi-Death Note related stuff.

I am not seriously expecting anyone to actually BUY anything based on my stories, so the store is really two-fold:

1. A bit of a laugh, populated at the end of the day, usually while drunk, with stuff designed to delight and amuse.
2. A place to sell stuff which might actually appeal to a wider audience, thus helping me with the running costs of life, servers and domain names.

This is all a lot more difficult than it sounds, as I can't use anything that's either been copyrighted or was fan-made by someone else. I'm not nicking your stuff, as that belongs to you.  (Though I'd jump at the chance to use it, if anyone did want to give me permission!)

Zazzle is extremely tough on not infringing upon anyone's intellectual property, so I can't add anything which belongs to Obha, Obata, Shuieshi, Shonen or Viz. I have to be creative in my own right.

Hence I've made you things, which you may customize into your own Letter. For example, I've used the letter L on a white jigsaw.

Purely randomly, you understand. After all, it could have been an M, MM or I:

Beyond all of this, it was mainly focusing on the section about My Own Way, which is now cleared of dead links - each replaced with live ones - at least on the main part. There are some deep inside which I still have to fix.

And I also reinstated the play-list, which was dead. I've recreated it via YouTube and plonked it in that way.

tl;dr - Enjoy the free stuff; big errors on the website fixed; do loads of ebook work on my behalf pl0x; and buy random crap.  Thanks!

Shi No Barado translates into English as Ballad of Death. The clues are there, even if Area 11 song-writer and lead singer Sparkles hadn't already stated that this is a love song inspired by Death Note.

Sparkles dresses and sings as Kira. The track features Beckii Cruel as Misa, as the couple perform Shi No Barado as an extremely dark duet disguised under quite light music.

Lyrics include such mega hints as this:

Cause baby when our eyes met
I could never look away
You’re all I ever wanted
There’s nothing left to say
Cause baby you can use me
I will do what you want me to
And baby you can kill me
When I’m no use to you

and

Area 11 is a group from Bristol, England. Most of their songs are based on anime, which makes them pretty much a house band in these parts!